Love Rekindled

There’s nothing like rediscovering a “lost love.”  And I rediscovered two.

First, I received a big box in the mail from Amazon.com (12/2010) via my favorite sister for my birthday.  I had absolutely no idea what it was (and I can usually guess what a present is–just ask my wife & kids).  Anyway, I opened it up only to find a 6-pack of Quisp.  If you never heard of Quisp, it’s a cereal made by Quaker Oats that disappeared from store shelves decades ago.  I had no idea you could still get it.  So I took my 6 boxes (“Can I have some Dad?” “No!”) and hid them in my room.  (Yeah I know, nice maturity, huh?)  I thoroughly enjoyed eating it for every breakfast meal for the next couple of weeks.  Ah yes, artificially sugared manna from heaven.

Second, years ago when I was a kid my brother got a unicycle.  He learned to ride it, but then graduated to a taller one with a bigger wheel.  That left me with the smaller one, which I too learned to ride.  As a teenager, I rode it on stage as part of a play, but I soon outgrew it so I followed in big brother’s footsteps and obtained a bigger unicycle with a larger wheel.  Then my sister learned to ride the smaller one.  My brother and I took our unicycles to college and rode them together on campus at night.  You know, no students around and endless sidewalks and staircases to master.  (See photos below that appeared in the Rexburg (Idaho) Standard Journal in 1981 and 1982.)  Once out of college, I rarely rode so the unicycle hung on the garage wall.

Fast forward to my mid-40s when my wife and I purchased a smaller unicycle for our children.  Only my son Jace learned to ride, but we still didn’t ride that often.  Then for Christmas in 2009, we got him a 6-footer.  Immediately the Holyoak household was smitten with a bout of “unicycle fever.”  Jace picked it up in no time.  Then my youngest daughter Hallie climbed on board the smaller unicycle and was peddling in no time.  My unicycle came off the garage wall and the three of us spent a lot of time riding together.  Jace entered his high school talent show with two unicycles and put on a performance that’s now an “instant classic” in Holyoak family lore.

The only downside of all the one-wheeled enthusiasm was Jace got a little too aggressive with my old, classic Schwinn, went off a 3-foot drop in the garage, and permanently bent it.  But he found a replacement online and, thanks to a friend of a friend, we received it in the mail from Wisconsin.

And it continued.  Just a few weeks later, my son excitedly called me about two used unicycles “for sale” in Missoula.  I checked them out and bought them.  They were both coated with rust spots and had worn out tires and leaky intertubes.  I refurbished both of them.  I took them apart, sanded off the rust, buffed the frame and rim, and replaced the tires and tubes.  Now I have my own 6-footer.  (Hallie claims it as well because she’s now riding it too.)  And I “spread the love” after giving the smaller one to my niece.  Below is a performance (6/17/2011) by my kids at a talent show at a church youth conference on the University of Montana campus.  The international Internet site unicycle.com posted the video on its web site.

So what’s the point of this rather unique tale?  If you have a “long lost love,” find it.  Rekindle it.  You’ll be glad you did.  I sure am.  (Below is a 2010 video by radio station Z-100 that includes Jace, Hallie and I riding our unicycles at a the Bike for Shelter, a fundraiser for the Watson Children's Shelter in Missoula.)

Two Loyal Dogs and a “Forever Faithful” Lesson Learned

My church is a little different than most. Instead of a preacher giving the main sermon during worship services every Sunday, it’s members of the congregation who are asked. They offer a mixture of personal experience, historic happenings and scripture to teach lessons.

On one particular Sunday, I was attending church services in Ronan, Montana, where an older gentleman said he was going to do three things: relate the tale of one dog, then relate the tale of another dog and then tie everything together.

Old Drum
(Credit: Abernaki)

First, he related the tale of George Graham Vest. He served two years in the U.S. Senate in the late 1800s but is best known for a court case. In 1869, he represented a man named Charles Burden whose hunting dog, named Old Drum, was shot and killed by a nearby sheep farmer. Burden sued for damages and wanted $150 (equivalent to $3,070 in 2020), the maximum amount allowed by law at the time.  

Vest promised he would win the case. During closing arguments, he referred to no previous testimony and instead delivered what became known as “The Eulogy of the Dog.”

Gentlemen of the jury: A man's dog stands by him in prosperity and in poverty, in health and in sickness. He will sleep on the cold ground, where the wintry winds blow and the snow drives fiercely, if only he may be near his master's side. He will kiss the hand that has no food to offer, he will lick the wounds and sores that come in encounters with the roughness of the world. He guards the sleep of his pauper master as if he were a prince. When all other friends desert, he remains. When riches take wings and reputation falls to pieces, he is as constant in his love as the sun in its journey through the heavens.

George Vest
(Credit: Library of Congress Prints &
Photographs
Brandy-Hand Photograph Collection)

If fortune drives the master forth an outcast in the world, friendless and homeless, the faithful dog asks no higher privilege than that of accompanying him to guard against danger, to fight against his enemies, and when the last scene of all comes, and death takes the master in its embrace and his body is laid away in the cold ground, no matter if all other friends pursue their way, there by his graveside will the noble dog be found, his head between his paws, his eyes sad but open in alert watchfulness, faithful and true even to death.

After hearing Vest’s heartfelt, passionate words, a jury returned a verdict in favor of Vest, his client and his client’s dog. Today, a statue of Old Drum stands in front of the Johnson County Courthouse in Warrensburg, Missouri.

The Sunday speaker then related the story of “Shep, Forever Faithful.” Shep belonged to an unknown sheep herder in Fort Benton, Montana, a small town in Montana’s Missouri Breaks Country (where I hunted a few years ago). The sheep herder fell ill and went to Fort Benton for treatment. Shep followed. The man died just a few days later. His family called for his body to be returned back East so the casket was loaded onto the train. And Shep was there to watch the train drive away carrying his master’s body.

What’s amazing is what happened again and again and again. Shep returned to the train yard every day, four times a day, as each train pulled in and continued on to the next stop. He entered, watched and waited for his master, the sheep herder, to return. Shep continued his vigil on a daily basis for more than five years from August 1936 until January 1942! Over time, the dog showed its years and its health suffered. In apparently icy conditions, Shep slipped and/or did not see a train coming, was hit and died.

A few days later, nearly everyone in Fort Benton attended Shep’s funeral where someone read, “The Eulogy of the Dog,” George Vest’s classic “sermon” given 72 years earlier some 1,300 miles away. Members of the local Boy Scout troop then carried Shep’s coffin and placed it on a  bluff overlooking town. Today, there is a sculpture of Shep on the Missouri River in Fort Benton and his collar and bowl are in a local museum.

The church speaker emphasized the amount of loyalty and dedication shown by man’s best friend, particularly shown by Shep. He then related some scriptures and had each of us in attendance ponder about our loyalty to Jesus Christ. Are we as dedicated to the Lord as Shep was to his master? What do we need to do to do the same? How do we need to act?

The speaker then read the scripture verses below.

John 14:15: “If you love me, keep my commandments.”

1 Nephi 3:7: "I will go and do the things which the Lord hath commanded, for I know that the Lord giveth no commandments unto the children of men, save he shall prepare a way for them that they may accomplish the thing which he commandeth them.” (Book of Mormon)

Doctrine & Covenants 93:20: “For if you keep my commandments you shall receive of his fulness, and be glorified in me as I am in the Father; therefore, I say unto you, you shall receive grace for grace.”

Alma 9:13: "Behold, do ye not remember the words which he spake unto Lehi, saying that inasmuch as ye shall keep my commandments, ye shall prosper in the land? And again it is said that: Inasmuch as ye will not keep my commandments ye shall be cut off from the presence of the Lord." (Book of Mormon)

Matthew 25:13: “Watch therefore, for ye know neither the day nor the hour wherein the Son of man cometh.”

So the moral of this man's Sunday address is become like Shep, watch, do and be “forever faithful!”

A Man, His Hunting Rifle and a Devastating House Fire

Below is a story that is reprinted with permission from the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation. I wrote it as part of a five-story, 63-page special section in the 2019 September-October issue of Bugle magazine. It is written as a dedication to my Grandpa Vern. It follows the path of his hunting rifle that was passed down to my father and eventually on to me before it was destroyed in a 2017 house fire that destroyed our home and most everything we owned. 

Through the Ashes

by Mark Holyoak

I thought, for a split second, about Grandpa Vern’s rifle. It was right there in a case under the bottom of my bed only feet away. But to get it, I would have to hit the floor and belly-crawl under the flames.

My shovel sliced through blackened remains along the subflooring of what used to be our bedroom until it struck a chunk of hidden metal. It was a sound that triggered accomplishment, relief and dread. More than a week of wondering, seeking and searching was over. I’d finally found it! Though its wooden stock was completely burned away, the barrel and action charred almost beyond recognition and the old reliable Redfield scope warped and melted, I had finally found what had been my most prized personal possession—my grandfather’s Model 70 Winchester .30-06.

He bought it shortly before Utah’s deer season opened in the fall of 1941. Two months later, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. Just under a year later, in November 1942, Thomas Vernon “Vern” Holyoak (my grandfather) left his home in Parowan, Utah, to join his fellow Americans and serve in the Army during World War II. He was 35 years old. After defeating the enemy in the African theater, his unit took part in the invasion of Sicily. He spent time in Palermo (a city I lived in 41 years later while serving as a missionary for my church). After again driving out the enemy, he went to Scotland and England before preparing for the invasion of France. His unit landed on Omaha Beach.

He spent more than two years with Allied troops as they pushed through France, Holland, Belgium and into Germany where he fought in many campaigns, at times under heavy fire. In the spring of 1945 he was plagued with a painful and chronic stomach issue. While he was briefly transferred out of Germany for a few weeks to receive treatment, 90 percent of the soldiers in his unit died during a fierce firefight at the Bridge of Remagen.

Grandpa Vern was in Paris on May 8, 1945, for V-E Day, when the Allies accepted the unconditional surrender of Nazi Germany. Three months later, he received orders to return home. As he flew onboard a B-17 to Casablanca, French Morocco, a report came over the radio confirming Japan’s official surrender. World War II was finally over.

He was not one to talk about his service—ever. It wasn’t until decades later that my father sat down and coaxed the experiences out of him for the sake of family history and his posterity. We learned that he fought in seven campaigns: North Africa, Sicily, Normandy, Northern France, the Battle of the Bulge, the Rhineland and Southern France. The U.S. Army awarded him a Battle Star for each campaign and a Bronze Star for hauling ammunition while under fire. The commanding general gave his mortar battalion a commendation for its efforts in Germany.

After my grandfather returned home, he resumed raising cattle and farming. He also returned to the mountains of southern Utah, where he loved hunting mule deer with the Model 70 each fall. As far as I know, he never had the opportunity to hunt elk since there weren’t any near his home back then. Grandpa passed away in 1992 and my father inherited the family farm and all of his possessions.

I moved my family to western Montana in 2003 where I couldn’t help noticing many of my buddies at church constantly exchanging photos, texts and hunting tales. Though I had hunted rabbits with Grandpa and my family many times as a kid, I had only ever chased deer once with my father, and that was too many decades ago to remember how to do it. But I was determined. I had to figure out this big game hunting thing. When I told my dad about my plans, he said, “I have just the rifle for you.” Shortly after that, he delivered grandpa’s Winchester.

I loved everything about it—the look, the feel, the way it fired, how comfortable it felt on my shoulder as I hiked, and especially knowing Grandpa customized it by cutting the stalk and attaching a recoil pad so it fit him. It fit me too, perfectly. I carried it with an almost tangible feeling of nostalgic gratitude and connectivity to him. I now owned the same rifle that helped Grandpa fill that old freezer in the basement of the farmhouse. I was determined not to squander this new opportunity to chase elk and deer to help feed my family while cementing relationships, both past and present.

The Model 70 not only provided a lot of meat for our family freezer over the years but great memories for me and my son Jace. At the age of 15, Jace made a perfect 202-yard shot on a cow elk with a bullet personally hand-loaded by Grandpa in the 1960s. It was the first elk taken by a Holyoak in our direct family line in more than 50 years. As we posed for a photo I felt that my grandfather was looking down on us. I thought how proud he would be of the great-grandson he never got to meet.

In January 2016, on a late season depredation hunt with the Model 70 in hand, Jace by my side and after a lengthy hike, I placed the crosshairs on a cow elk 375 yards away. Once again, Grandpa Vern’s Winchester fired true. Several hours later, after a lengthy drag through snow up to the middle of our calves, Jace and I and a hunting buddy sat in the bed of the pickup exhausted, sweaty and yet full of adrenaline from what had been our most exhilarating and exhausting hunt together. When I posted the father-son photo with the elk on Facebook, my mother made this comment: “Great picture! Grandpa Vern would be so pleased to see this!”

In December 2016, Jace shouldered the .30-06 atop a mountain ridge and dropped an unsuspecting cow in its tracks. He excitedly called his fiancé and shortly thereafter they made their first joint purchase—a freezer to store the meat. Across the 14 years Jace and I got to carry that rifle, it helped us tag four elk and roughly 20 deer between the two of us.

December 29, 2017, was a frigid day in western Montana. My wife Lori and I were in the midst of replacing interior doors when the power went out. Without electricity, the late afternoon darkness fell quickly over our home so our cordless drill fell silent and our Friday afternoon project ended early. There would be no Netflix tonight. There wasn’t much to do but stoke the fire in our wood-burning stove downstairs and try to keep our house warm. As we lay in bed, we spoke of our ongoing plans to give the home we’d purchased 2½ years before on 10 acres a few miles west of Frenchtown a makeover. With that in mind, a fire crackling in the basement and a hint of the scent that only comes from wood-generated heat, we both fell asleep.

At roughly 6:30 the following morning we awoke. My brain felt as groggy as my body when Lori said she smelled smoke. It was still dark outside. As I turned on my cellphone flashlight we saw the smoke in our upstairs bedroom was as thick as a fog. But the odor was not that of a regular wood-burning fire. It smelled odd, almost electrical in nature—or so I thought. I headed for the furnace. Though the smoke was thick upstairs, I saw individual smoke columns in the furnace room. I thought the furnace somehow shorted out during the power failure and filled the house with smoke. Upon returning upstairs, Lori insisted we open the windows.

“But it’s 12 degrees outside. If we open the windows, we’ll freeze,” I protested. She was right. For the sake of our lungs and our health we had to clear the air the best we could.

With the windows throughout the house cranked wide open, I gathered more wood for the stove as we huddled under blankets around it. We chatted and even laughed for a while, but when I glanced outside from our half-basement I saw an orange glow on the snow.

“The house is on fire!” I yelled.

I sprinted up the two flights of stairs only to see flames shooting out of the ceiling of our bedroom closet. “Get some warm clothes on!” I yelled. “Call 9-1-1! Get out of the house!”

Flames shooting out from our bedroom window

I sprinted downstairs and into the garage in search of something to douse the flames. No electricity meant no water pump which meant little to no water. My brain was running a million miles an hour and totally overlooked the fire extinguisher we kept under the kitchen sink. I ran back upstairs to see what I could salvage before the fire claimed it. As I turned the corner, the entire bedroom from about four feet down from the ceiling was fully engulfed in flames. It almost knocked me off my feet. I thought, for a split second, about Grandpa Vern’s rifle. It was right there in a case under the bottom of my bed a mere four feet away. But to get it, I would have to hit the floor and belly-crawl under the flames. It was not worth the risk. It was too late. I turned and ran to the garage, ripped open the garage doors and drove our two vehicles to safety. Then I stood with Lori in the front yard and watched our home burn until the firefighters arrived.

Investigators determined the cause of the blaze was a chimney fire that smoldered and spread while we slept. That odd smell was not electrical wiring but insulation in the rafters above our bedroom. Two-thirds of our home had to be razed and about 95 percent of our belongings were deemed unsalvageable. Among the losses were all of my guns, many of which belonged to Grandpa Vern: a 1917 Luger 10 mm WW I edition, a 16-gauge shotgun dating back to the 1940s, a .357 magnum pistol in sparkling condition and my pump-action .22 Rossi rifle given to me by my parents when I was 12 years old.

It took 10 months and a lot of hard work after the fire to rebuild our home. Do I feel sad for having lost those guns? Yes, heartbroken. But as time passes I have more gratitude than ever. I am grateful that my wife and I escaped unharmed. I am grateful that Grandpa Vern’s Army uniform somehow survived the flames and the smoke. And I am grateful for those 14 years my son and I got to carry his .30-06 over the ridges and valleys of Montana’s backcountry. Grandpa may be gone, but I felt he was with us on our adventures, every step of the way.

Mark Holyoak is the RMEF director of communication. His middle name is Vernon, named after his grandfather.

Another photo of my charred rifle

What's More Montana than That?

"Do you want us to haul that away for you?"

"Nah, I'd like to keep it but could you move it for me?"

We were talking about the lower section of one of the nine massive ponderosa pine trees we had cut down during a 2020 logging operation that removed about 350 of 1,000 trees across our six-acre forest. My thought was the oversized log would function great as a place for multiple people to sit on by our fire pit. And so that was its final resting place. But that thinking didn't last very long.

We asked the loggers to slice a thin section off a stump on the side of our house so we could convert it into kind of a redneck tic tac toe game. That round, as well as several others left behind, spawned a new idea. I'd previously created a couple of signs with extra barbed wire I already have. What if I applied that same approach to the rounds? 

It's no longer tricky finding the entrance to our place

And what if I used my chainsaw to cut a bunch more rounds and dole them out to family and friends? What's more Montana than that?

The first couple of wedges went to Aubrey's family here in Montana, the parents of my son-in-law in north Idaho and a round for my son Jace in Washington. I use bolt cutters, several wrenches, needle nose pliers, finishing nails and a hammer to bend, create and attach the letters, one at a time. Cap that off with a coat of wood sealant, that almost seems to make the barbed wire glow, and out the door they went.

A couple of months later it worked out that all my siblings would be together for the first time since Dad's funeral. And they'd be coming to my house. Of course, they needed to take a piece of Montana home with them. Okay, back to work. 

The happy recipients:  Kerry, Amy, Arwynn (stepping in for Mom), Alan & Kathrine

Now there's a Montana round in Missouri, one in Texas, one in Kansas and another in Idaho.

Just off the back porch at Mom's place in Wichita

On Alan's back deck in Rexburg

Back to the chainsaw and I cut off a couple more rounds - one to go to New Mexico when Lacey and her family move there and another for Hallie down in Utah.

Who's next?

Redneck Tic Tac Toe

Simply put, it's a fantastic fit! Located near the northwest corner of our six-acre property you can see it jut above the grass around it. 

The large, round stump is all that's left from what was perhaps the tallest tree on our place. It was about 20 yards from our home and a mere six or seven paces from the pump house. We had it and eight other extremely tall trees towering above our house removed during a 2020 logging operation that gave our home quality defensible space and thinned our forest of about 350 of 1,000 trees.

Down comes the tall ponderosa

Lori came up with the idea to transform the stump into a fun, kid-friendly outdoor game, so I asked one of the loggers if he could reduce it to a nice, clean cut parallel with the ground. And he obliged thanks to great skill and an the extremely long arm on his chain saw.

From there, it was my turn to implement Lori's vision. I grabbed a short 2x4, my circular saw and made four shallow cuts across the top of it in opposite directions. A little black paint highlighted those cuts. From there, I gathered five rocks and five pine cones from the property and the result was, well, let's call it redneck tic tac toe. 

Rocks vs. cones

Let's play!

Making Over Our Montana Forest

I love living in the woods of Montana! The smell of conifers, the scurrying of critters, the beauty of wildflowers on the forest floor, the sounds of songbirds and the swaying of massive, majestic ponderosa pines in the breeze. But to live in the mountain forests of Montana means you need to be proactively prepared for the possibility of wildfire. 

We know that firsthand. In 2013, a dry lightning storm sparked the 11,000-acre Lolo Creek Complex Fire in the mountains above our home when we lived in Lolo. It charred 17 square miles of forest, destroyed five homes, triggered the evacuation of 2,100 people including a ranch where I worked for eight years and was rated the nation's number-one firefighting priority. Huge chunks of ash and even small pieces of charred tree limbs fell from the sky onto our neighborhood from the fire several miles away. Law enforcement stopped by to notify us to keep an ear for sirens. If we heard them on our streets going forward, we would be forced to evacuate. Luckily, firefighters worked hard, the weather eventually turned and the flames died down so that didn't happen.

Conducting the great 2019 Holyoak tree count

Now we live on six acres amidst a stand of ponderosas just below the mountains in the foothills above the small community of Frenchtown. As pretty as the trees are, there were too many of them too close to our home. We needed to establish a defensible space so if a wildfire ever did threaten our home, we would be able to make a stand. And there were a lot of trees on or place. How many? In the spring of 2019, Lori and I estimated there were 1,003 ponderosa pines on our property and that didn't take into account anything shorter than six feet nor the aspen or other tree species. 

We wanted to remove some particularly tall trees that were too close to our home, including one that was already dead. We needed to drop that big, brown thing before it decided to drop on its own and take a structure, a car or a person with it. We called a tree removal service and were quoted $4,000 to remove two giant ponderosa trees. Four grand?!

Seeking a more financially feasible solution, we then talked to a friend of ours, Mike Stoker, who is a commercial logger. He offered a much better deal. Mike would bring his heavy machinery to our place, remove the trees we requested and also thin trees below the shop for no charge. In return, he wanted to claim the logs and sell them to a mill. Deal! Mike was busy doing contract work on Forest Service land so it wouldn't happen in 2019. 

In early May of 2020, we heard the rumbling and watched as the big rigs lumbered onto the property. It was exciting! I had seen logging machinery in action at a measured distance but being up close was really cool. Mike manned a feller buncher, a self-propelled machine with tracks, a long arm with a single cutting head and shorter arms capable of gripping and holding multiple trees at once. 

Delimber doing its thing

Two other loggers manned other vehicles. One of them was a skidder, a tractor-like machine with an arm capable of grabbing several downed trees at once and dragging them to a designed drop zone. My favorite was the delimber, which would pick up a tree, hold it parallel to the ground, strip if of all its limbs and then cut the logs into a designated length and then drop them. A logging truck also made several early morning stopovers to load and haul off the logs. A water tender, used to haul water and fight wildfires, also spent a morning on the property to make sure a massive fire ignited in a slash pile remained in control.

Lots of work going on

With all the limbs removed from many trees, there was a lot to burn. And those fires were big and they burned hot! In fact, they smoldered for weeks. The first night was especially nerve-wracking. You see, if the flames spread to nearby properties, we would be liable. I found myself wandering to the window several times late night and early the next morning. We were happy that rainy weather helped reduce the possibility of spreading. 

...baby burn!

Burn...

I took a day off work to watch the fun when they took down the largest trees closest to our house. Lori, Kyler, Lyla, Lexi and I sat on the front porch to take it all in. It was better than watching a movie. This was live action stuff! Mike and his boys showed their skill with the chainsaw. They couldn't use the feller buncher on those closest trees because the trunks were too large to grab and control. The guys told us the direction they planned to fell the trees and then did exactly that. We counted the rings on the downed, dead tree and it was 95 years old. 

Skill with a chainsaw

Spectator sport

Kyler age 7, tree age 95

Kids' paradise

Feller buncher at work

Whacking & stacking

Just a little off the top, please

Kyler at the controls

The kids got in on the fun up close and personal. Mike let Kyler sit on his lap in the feller buncher while Lyla got to spend time in the cockpit of the delimber. And yeah, I got in on it as well. Mike let me cram into the feller buncher with him to watch the work from behind the controls. 

Happy Lyla after her ride

In the end, Mike and the crew thinned approximately 350 trees. And that's a good thing. Thinned forests not only slow the spread of a potential fire but removing the canopy above allows more sunlight to reach the forest floor below which results in thicker grasses and vegetation. And that's good news for critters that rely on quality forage.

After several weeks of work, when the logging equipment rolled off the property to the neighbor's, we were left with short stumps all over. We didn't care about those in the forest part of our place, but we wanted to remove six of the larger ones in the grass between the house and shop. Mike gave his brother a call and he brought in a stump grinder. One afternoon and one morning of work later, and mission accomplished! 

We kept a couple of the larger trees closer to home for shade but removing others really brightened things up. Everything looks great and we feel much better. The big dead tree is gone. Other large trees that towered over our structures are also gone. 

Before

After

So how did we cap the tree removal event? By starting a new era. We planted a new tree - one that will represent the family name and kids will be able to climb generations from now. After all, it's an oak.

Meeting Mr. Mann, a Super Bowl Champion

Below is a Facebook post from February 11, 2013. 

Sometimes, you never know who you'll run into. Earlier this morning, Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation life member Erroll Mann walked into our visitors center to talk with me about some wildlife issues. 

Erroll was a placekicker in the National Football League from 1968-78 and wore a championship ring from Super Bowl XI when he played for the Raiders. (Yeah, he took it off and let me take a closer look at it.) After swapping stories, I learned he was on the field in New Orleans on November 8, 1970 and kicked what looked to be the winning field goal for the Lions with 11 seconds left against the Saints. After a squib kick, the Saints completed a quick pass and then Tom Dempsey attempted and nailed a 63-yard field goal (an NFL record that stood for 43 years) to win the game (see video below). Erroll says he was so mad. He said Dempsey couldn't even hit short field goals in warmups.

Wow, how 'bout that!

I was really sad to learn that Erroll passed away on April 11, 2013, only two months to the day after our encounter.

As a New Orleans native and life-long Saints fan, this remains my favorite all-time Saints highlight!

This highlight shows both Eroll Mann's field goal and Tom Dempsey's game-winner.